External CSV Reader package

[BowenM]

"Read Delimited Spreadsheet" works fine for plain numeric data... but croaks when trying to read string data that is surrounded by quotes containing a comma. For example the CSV file:

Date/Time,Value

"Aug 31, 2:00PM",42

would return 3 columns:

"Aug 31 | 2:00PM" | 42

Quick google hunt didn't find anyone haven written a package to do this. Sure, I can do it myself but I figured I'd take the lazy "maybe someone has already done it" approach first.

[RTSLVU]

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@BowenM wrote:

"Read Delimited Spreadsheet" works fine for plain numeric data... but croaks when trying to read string data that is surrounded by quotes containing a comma. For example the CSV file:

Date/Time,Value

"Aug 31, 2:00PM",42

would return 3 columns:

"Aug 31 | 2:00PM" | 42

Quick google hunt didn't find anyone haven written a package to do this. Sure, I can do it myself but I figured I'd take the lazy "maybe someone has already done it" approach first.

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Everything is going to treat a comma as a separator in a file that is supposed to contain Comma Separated Values.

You could try setting the separator to " if that's what is actually separating the values in the file.

Otherwise post a sample of the data file you are working with maybe we can come up with a more elegant solution.

[BowenM]

Yep. CSV stands for Comma Separated Value. Got it.

CSV standard allows for string fields to be enclosed in double quotes

"Aug 31, 2:00PM"

In those cases, every CSV parser in another language (Excel included) reads the comma enclosed in double quotes as part of the string field, not as a separator.

[avogadro5 · Accepted solution]

"robust" CSV on VIPM https://www.vipm.io/package/lava_lib_robust_csv/

[BowenM]

Hunted VIPM, don't know how I missed it.

Thank you!!

[Frozen]

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@BowenM wrote:

In those cases, every CSV parser in another language (Excel included) reads the comma enclosed in double quotes as part of the string field, not as a separator.

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Silly me didn't believe Excel was that smart... sure enough, it works as described! 😳